The Travels of Theodore Ducas [Pseud.] in Various Countries in Europe, at the Revival of Letters and Art Volume 1, P. 1; Part the First. Italy

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated.1822 Excerpt: ... CHAPTER IV. FLORENCE. General Remarks on Florence.--Its Literary Glories.--The Tuscan Triumvirate of the Fourteenth Century.--Sketch of the Life of Danle.--Considerations on his great Poem.--Its Plan.--Object of the Poem.--Stories of Francesca da Rimini, andUgolino of Pisa.--Characteristical Feature of Dante's Mind.--Particular Passages of Striking Beauty. Moral Tendency of the Poem.--General Estimate of the Merits of theDivina Commedia.--Dante's Commentators.--Petrarca.--His Life.--The Nature of his Attachment to Laura considered.--Laura's Character.--Petrarca's Hypocrisy and Libertinism.--His Poetical Merits.--His Learned Acquisitions.--Boccaccio.--His Life and Writings. CHAPTER IV. FLORENCE. Florence detained me many months, but a stranger must pass a much longer time in the city of the Medici and in the garden of Tuscany, before his mind would sink into a state of indolence and satiety. No scenery can be richer than the storied vale of Arno, flourishing in the beauty of perpetual spring. The convents and villas, half hidden in the recesses, or standing prominent on the eminences of the neighbourhood of Florence, are studies for the painter. I have often traced, with my Boccaccio in my hand, the various landscapes that extend before the windows of the Franciscan convent which Cosmo de' Medici built on the top of Fesole, and have admired both the beauties of the scenery and their picturesque delineation in the pages of the Vol. i. o father of Italian prose. Nor did I fail to linger for many an hour in the villa at Fesole, where Lorenzo de' Medici, with his lettered friends Pico de Mirandola and Angelo Poliziano, passed his attic days. But when my mind was in a mood of more than ordinary seriousness, I used to fly from the splendours of Florence, from the ...